


What You Remember

by Anonymous



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, F/M, Fluff, Historical, Incest, Kink Meme, Reincarnation, Twincest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 06:33:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11307714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: In every single lifetime, Jason and Cheryl were lovers who successfully ended up finding each other. This time, they're reincarnated as twins.*Written for a prompt.





	What You Remember

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt on the kink meme. Original prompt is:
> 
> "In every single lifetime, Jason and Cheryl were lovers who successfully ended up finding each other. This time, they're reincarnated as twins and cannot be as open and free with their love. Their parents catch on and try to keep them apart in fear of being ostracized and ridiculed, but Cheryl and Jason still manage to get together every time. They plan to run away together and continue their relationship despite the obstacles. I love angst but a happy ending would be preferred."

In their chamber far beyond the world of men, far beyond the clouds and the shining lights of heaven and far beyond even the palace of the gods themselves, labor in perpetuity the three sisters of fate. Since chaos gave way to form, they have been, and they will be until nothing remains. In their hands, ancient and eternal, are spun the threads that govern the destinies of all that dwell on the earth and in the heavens and elsewhere. Each thread, teased out from their spool, contains in its infinite length the tale and the essence of one spirit, through all the lives and all the eons and all the sorrows and all the pleasures it may live. Yet it is said that now and again through the ages, for purposes known only to them, the fates make a strange choice. Sometimes, they will wind two threads together, and these will run down through eternity, the spirits they bear forever intertwined.

* * *

The moments come to Cheryl in dreams, and in brief flashes of recollection. Like scattered shards of a once grand mirror, they suggest a whole that if repaired could and would reveal everything. Cheryl has been privy to these frozen pieces of time since as far back as she could remember. Since she and Jason were children playing as children will in Thornhill’s garden, oblivious to the world. Since she and Jason were infants taking their first steps. Since she and Jason were conceived together in their mother’s womb. Since she and Jason…

Always she and Jason.

Though they often come to her in her sleep, Cheryl knows they’re not dreams or imaginings. Not normal ones at least. She holds onto each memory as it returns to her, as if it was a precious stone. Because they’re _real_. Maybe not real in the sense that most people would understand the word, but real in the only sense that matters to her.

“Jason,” She says to her brother one day, as they hold hands at the bank of Sweet Water River, the evening before their first day of kindergarten. “Did you know we were always together?” Were they older, she might have elaborated, tried to explain what she meant exactly. But children can understand grand concepts conveyed in the simplest of terms.

“Of course I know, Cher,” He answers, as if it were silly of her to even ask. “Do you remember?” she inquires.

“Yeah,” He responds. Cheryl smiles, satisfied.

When Cheryl goes to bed that night, five years old, her stomach alive with butterflies, she dreams a dream that she cannot quite understand.

There are swords and shields and chariots, and kings and gods long forgotten by history. A wine dark sea, a city in the east destined to fall, and a face that launched a thousand ships. She doesn’t recognize the language she speaks and understands perfectly, but Cheryl knows it’s old and gone.

 _The_ _losers very rarely get to tell their stories. That’s what she thinks, as the walls shake and the sky turns black with volley after volley of arrows. He turns to her, his blue eyes burning and brimming with tears. He holds a sword, and she a dagger, but there is nothing they alone can do. She kisses him, on impulse, hungrily, knowing it will be the last time. He tangles his hands in her brilliant red hair and they taste each other’s tears._

_Legend will record that the Greeks breached the walls of Troy through their ingenuity. A wooden horse and a false promise of peace. The truth is far simpler and far less noble. The invaders took the city by sheer force of arms._

_As the walls finally give and this mad war reaches its gory apex, they stand together, facing the oncoming army. Facing oblivion. Facing the world. Together. As they always had. As they always would. He raises his sword. They die side by side and retreat into eternity together._

_Troy burns._

_The Age of Heroes comes to its sad, ignominious end._

The next morning, as the Blossom family’s chauffeur ferries them to kindergarten (for their parents could not be bothered to escort them to their first day), Cheryl leans over in the backseat, and whispers into her brother’s ear. One little hand cups her mouth to make absolutely certain the driver is not privy.

 “Do you remember what an Achaean is?” She asks.

 Jason’s brows furrow for a second. He shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

 “I hate them.”

 She nods. That’s all either of them says. All either of them has is a brief pieces of that long, epic story. And yet without any more said, they understand entirely.

 Jason and Cheryl grow into handsome, well-formed youngsters. Their parents and everyone else expects that they will grow apart eventually, but as the years pass they never do. They remain a single soul unhappily split in two. But they do their best to rectify that, and one can hardly be seen without the other by their side.

 As they get older, they lose the clear knowledge they once had of their immeasurably ancient union, and yet it remains, lurking in their hearts, driving their every action and emotion.

 Jason sneaks into her room one night, when they’re fifteen. The hallway unfortunately runs right past their parent’s bedroom, and he can’t risk waking them. So he climbs out of his window, shimmies along the sill and then up the trellis to Cheryl’s room. She slides the window open for her brother, and then says: “Jason, you _know_ you’re not supposed to do this anymore. Dad’s gonna get an aneurysm.”

 Jason smiles. It is indeed, his father’s least favorite of all their shenanigans. The last time he was caught was last Christmas Eve, Clifford had been apoplectic, and roared that if he did it again there would be ‘severe consequences’. Of course, he’d just gotten better at not getting caught.

 “I’m not supposed to do a lot of things, Cher. I wasn’t supposed to draw a dick on Reggie’s helmet or deflate Weatherbee’s tires, but that didn’t stop me, did it?”

Cheryl rolls her eyes, but can't suppress a giggle. 

“Just keep your voice down.”

 He lies down on her bed, and she settles in beside him. For a moment each is content to enjoy the presence and the gentle heartbeat of the other. Jason rolls over to face her.

“I am getting a _serious_ case of déjà vu right now.”

“Well…this isn’t the first time you’ve crept into my room in the middle of the night all serial killer-ish.”

“Yeah but…it’s different.”

_The forum is great and crowded, but they still manage to find one another, as they always have and always do. She sees the flash of red hair, so much like her own, that she holds in her heart as an eternal memory more powerful than life itself, for unlike life it carries down through the centuries and millennia._

_Though young, he’s a senator, as he says, and these are the days in which that still means something, before the ruin of the republic. Of course, the title does not impress, because it’s hard to impress her. But_ he _impresses her, as he always does. And he is more than impressed by her._

 _They live in the center of the world, and they are the nucleus of that center. They travel around the bend of_ Italia _in a magnificent galley, cutting through the deep blue Mediterranean Sea, and she laughs at stupid jokes he makes about the senate and the consuls and the legions, but she seals her lips after each laugh because she remembers that she’s supposed to be haughty and aloof._

_On the night they lie side by side on a rooftop on the outskirts of Rome, tracing the shapes of the constellations in the heavens above, hand in hand._

_"There’s Orion and his belt…”_

_“Wow…you need some kind of imagination to see a guy and his belt_ _in_ that _. And that’s supposed to be a lion? Yeah…okay.”_

_He frowns. “Why are you always so critical?”_

_She grabs him harshly and kisses him, breaking only long enough to say, “Who cares about the stars?”_

_As dawn breaks over the Capitoline Hill, the blood of a dictator is spilled out onto the stones of the senate, and the wheels of history begin to turn. But they kiss again, and that is of no concern to them._

A serious case of déjà vu.

Cheryl awakens the next morning to find Jason still fast asleep, his face buried in her ginger hair. She shakes him awake, gently. His bleary, lovely blue eyes open, and then he closes them again and shifts closer to her.

“Jason! Go back to your room! It’s daylight.”

He grumbles in protest, but stands and shuffles over to the window. He climbs out onto the trellis, and waves.

“ _Vale_.”

“What?”

He’s not sure himself where that came from, and indeed he wonders for the rest of the day. Sounds a little bit like Latin.

That day, after school, the Blossoms are to attend a banquet hosted by Clifford, in honor of the company’s 100th anniversary. There are assigned seating places as there must be at any _proper_ function. Cheryl finds the card bearing her name in flowery script at precisely the opposite end of the massive table from her brother. She shoots a glare at her father, and for a moment wonders if he somehow knows about her brother’s nighttime wanderings. Regardless, it’s not a coincidence.

Later that night, as the festivities wind down, Clifford calls his son over and introduces him to the daughter of an associate of his. She’s pretty enough. Jason dances with her, and makes small talk, because it’s clearly what his father wants. But she’s…well…boring. She never snarks, never offers any opinions or ideas of her own, never says anything  _interesting_. He stares across the ballroom at Cheryl and tries to imagine the rapid-fire insults and commentary she’d have for each and every of their stiff-backed, well-heeled guests.

Cheryl spends the night staring daggers at her father.

“See if this does anything to pry them apart…” Clifford mumbles to his wife, not as quietly as he thinks. Cheryl grits her teeth. He actually thinks he’s being subtle.

Jason splits from the girl the first chance he gets. He finds his sister on the terrace, as the guests are beginning to file out. He takes a seat next to her, hoping she’ll speak first.

“So…have fun with the little princess dad gave you?” She tries commendably hard to cover the words in a glaze of her usual sarcasm. Jason can hear all too well the real hurt dripping from her voice.

“Hell no,” He responds. “It was like talking to a turnip.” Jason looks over, hoping to see a smile, and feels a pang of disappointment when he doesn’t find it. The disappointment quickly melts into anger towards their conniving father.

“She was pretty though, wasn’t she?” Cheryl asks.

Jason sighs.

“Cheryl, I know you well enough to know when you’re fishing for compliments. So the answer’s no.” He reaches out and gently takes her hand in his. “She wasn’t near as pretty as you.”

Finally, he sees the small, almost imperceptible smile he hoped for.

“Just telling me what I want to hear?”

“Sometimes-rarely-what you want to hear and the truth overlap.”

She sighs. "Dad's such a bastard sometimes."

"He's just...just...I don't know, actually." 

"He thinks we're too close," Cheryl spits.

"Are we?" Jason asks.

"What does that even mean, 'too close'? Is there a proper amount of 'close' we're supposed to be? How do you measure 'close'? What's the unit for 'close'?" she snaps. "Metric, not imperial."

Jason chuckles.

“If it pisses off dad that much, we're doing something right," Jason finally says.

"I love you."

When they kiss, a psychic door, long sealed away, is unlocked. Cheryl feels as if they’ve done it a thousand times. She _knows_ they have, even though this is the first time in this life. She doesn’t feel so much as an inkling of guilt, and with his lips against hers she has the sudden sense of being outside of time, somewhere years and customs and the ages have no meaning. In the blissful embrace of eternity.

They are reconnected to the totality of time. There is an explosive, comforting realization that they are only two faces of eternal beings that have born a thousand.

That night, Cheryl dreams again. She dreams of a river, and blood, and conquest, and victory. And red. 

_The river reminds her of Styx. It’s slick with blood and oil, thick with corpses and bits of ships and shattered warplanes floating in the soiled waters. She closes her eyes because she doesn’t want to look. She looks to him for confirmation that it’s okay. The boat is filled to bursting with warm, writhing bodies but she locks onto his deep blue eyes and absolutely refuses to see or acknowledge anything else._

_They make it across the river, through the hail of mortar fire and the shriek of Nazi dive-bombers. They slog through the smoldering wreckage of a city once called a jewel. They fight and bleed, for this is a war that calls not only the men, but the women and children too, to arms._

_Somewhere in a red square far from here sit the men who have sent them to their deaths from the comfort of their lofty offices. Across the continent there is a chieftain that sought to dominate the world, and will soon have his own designs turned back upon him. Even further, across a stormy sea that neither of them have ever seen, and yet that both have sailed a thousand times, engineers of war labor to produce a weapon more devastating than any ever dreamed of._

_They huddle together in the parlor of a bombed-out hotel, forgetting the war that devours mankind. They kiss again, as they’ve done and will do in times of war and peace alike. They hear the whine of incoming artillery._

_The battle was called the turning point, not only of the war but of the century. The invader is driven back towards his own borders._

_Soon, a red flag will be raised over Berlin._

_For them, slain again in the fires of Stalingrad all of that is inconsequential. They die together in the ruins of that city, and continue on to their next meeting in eternity. One more life. One more kiss._

Two weeks after their seventeenth birthday, they attend a party at Reggie Mantle’s house. It’s all quite routine. Dangerous levels of alcohol. The stench of marijuana infecting the night air. Dumb teens murdering their brain cells and grinding up against one another.

When she can no longer bear the banal chatter of her friends or the drunken attempts at romance from a dozen indistinguishable boys, Cheryl goes off to find Jason. And she does find her brother, lying alone in the grass outside, staring up into the sky. She kicks him gently in the side.

She wants to insult him, because he was supposed to drive them home. She wants to say something witty and edgy. Instead, she lies down beside him and rests her head on his shoulder. And after a long silence he speaks.

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m remembering,” She mutters.

“What do you remember?”

“I remember…Troy burning. I remember watching the Persians beaten at Salamis. I remember dying of the great plague. I remember the siege of Vienna. I remember weeping when Napoleon fell. I remember fighting the fascists at Stalingrad in ’45." She turns to him, and plants a brief kiss on his lips. "I remember you.”

He smiles, and the futility of any effort, by their parents or any other temporal force to separate them, becomes clear. Because they are bound by the very cords of destiny . Because they simply _are_. And through peace and war and fire and death, they will emerge victorious and united in the end.

Somewhere far away, the Fates spin out their threads.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it OP.


End file.
